Dagenham sewing machinists recall strike that changed women's lives | Politics | The Guardian Trade unions Dagenham sewing machinists recall strike that changed women's lives 45 years after their dispute with Ford which led to the Equal Pay Act, strikers remember the making of modern industrial history Baroness Edith Summerskill (l) chats to striking sewing machinists at Ford's Dagenham plant in June 1968. Photograph: Bob Aylott/Getty Images Thursday 6 June 2013 11.56 EDT First published on Thursday 6 June 2013 11.56 EDT Share on Messenger Close For Vera Sime, a former sewing machinist at Ford's Dagenham plant in the 1960s, one of the epochal days in modern industrial history started like any other. "It was like a normal work day in that I got the children ready and gave them to my sister.

Then we all met at the factory and got on the coach." Along with scores of female colleagues infuriated by a pay structure that blatantly favoured male workers, Vera travelled to the streets of Whitehall on 28 June 1968 where employees brandished a famous banner. It read: "We want sex". Twenty-first century prejudices make it tempting to jump to conclusions about that image, but these were hardly women playing up to some hackneyed Essex stereotype. A mammoth meeting that day between eight strike leaders and Barbara Castle, who was then employment secretary, brokered a deal to end their three-week strike, which resulted in the women agreeing to return to work and the conception of the 1970 Equal Pay Act. "Oh, we had some jokes with some men with that [banner]," recalls Vera , now 83, at her home in Rainham, Essex. She is interrupted by her friend and former colleague, 80-year-old Gwen Davis. "Well, you hadn't unfurled the banner properly had you?" she says.

The full banner read: "We want sex equality." "Men were leaning out of their [taxi] cabs shouting: 'We'll be back at 6!'" interjects Eileen Pullen, also 83 and another former striker. Then the trio are overcome with the giggles. The three women are reminiscing about the 45th anniversary of 187 female Ford sewing machinists going on strike on 7 June 1968 in protest at their jobs being classified as unskilled - a story that inspired the 2010 film Made in Dagenham, starring Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins and Miranda Richardson. It was originally entitled We Want Sex. Since its release the former strikers have jetted to international film premieres, and addressed students - as well as the current staff at Ford - on the topic of equality. "A lot of the women at Ford came over to us and said: 'Thank you very much for fighting for us'," says Davis. "We are very proud." Back in 1968 the Ford women, and their fight for equal pay, split opinion.

Not every trade union representative was initially supportive of what now seems obvious, that women and men should be paid the same rate for doing the same job. The women's shop steward, the late Lil O'Callaghan, had to push the convenor Bernie Passingham into supporting the cause, barking at him to "get off your arse Bernie and do something about it". He did, but the striking women also received abuse from male Ford colleagues who were not able to work - as well as their wives. "Some of the men said: 'Good for you girl', but others said: 'Get back to work, you're only doing it for pin money'," says Pullen. "A lot of women jeered us. They didn't go to work and their husbands were at Fords and we'd put them out of work". "But our wages weren't for pin money," says Davis. "They were to help with the cost of living, to pay your mortgage and help pay all your bills. It wasn't pocket money. No woman would go out to work just for pocket money, would she? Not if she's got a family".

For all of the focus on how the strike forced the issue of equal pay over the subsequent four and a half decades, the essence of this dispute was not money, however, but recognition. The female machinists, who stitched the materials required to make Ford's car and van seats, were classified within the company pay structure as grade B. That meant they were officially unskilled, despite having to pass tests in order to gain their employment. Their fight was to be acknowledged as skilled or grade C, and Davis explains exactly how high the standards were. "One of the ladies who worked with me had been a machinist for [Norman] Hartnell," she says. "She'd been a dressmaker making the Queen's clothes. She went for a test at Ford and they turned her down. Now if you're working for Hartnell you must be a good machinist mustn't you? [Her brother] had been at Fords quite a few years then. He said: 'Why have you turned my sister down? She's been making the Queen's clothes and you're telling me she can't machine?' So they had her back and gave her a job". "They put us on to B grade with the janitors.

It did annoy us," she continues. "In the end our union said: 'You've got to protest, you've got to strike'. If you're doing sweeping you don't need to be skilled, do you? It's obvious isn't it?" After years battling for recognition, plus promises that the new grading was on its way, Ford and the women finally ran out of road. The sewing machinists walked out and became a national news story. No machinists meant no seats. And no seats meant no cars. Ford management was apoplectic. Bill Batty, the group's UK managing director, said that the strike left the company with no alternative but to close substantial portions of the assembly, stamping and body plants at Dagenham. He hinted that the dispute could eventually put 40,000 Ford jobs at risk. He laid off 9,000 Dagenham workers, and although he later invited them all back there were lasting costs. The dispute was estimated to have lost the company export orders worth £117m in today's money. "We realised that it couldn't go on," says Davis. "It was crippling the firm, wasn't it?" That collective realisation led to the meeting with Castle.

If the confrontational mood of those three weeks is what most outsiders associate with the Ford sewing machinists, it is not how the striking women recall their 20-year-plus careers with the firm. "I must admit, working for Ford was a very happy time of my life," recalls Sime. "If I was ill, I missed it. It was always a laugh.." That affection for their workplace remains, despite the women being made to work in an "old shack with an asbestos roof" that let in the rain and housed rats and mice. "In summer it was like a sweat house and they came round and gave us lime juice and salt tablets," says Sime. "And there was a man standing there with a whip … Nah. Nearly had you then!" They all guffaw, as they do at recollections of the male streaker who dashed across their floor. "He must have earned money for that. We'd have paid him. We just saw the top of his body anyway as the machines were up like this," she says, gesturing at a level that preserved his modesty. There are also tales of another colleague known as Effing Eileen because of her penchant for swearing.

When Henry Ford visited Dagenham, Effing Eileen sat on the front row and wore a hat on which she had written the word "bollocks". "She was a good worker though," says Pullen. "When she got married she only had half day off and came back again." All 187 came back to work after Castle's intervention, but not for equal pay or their C grade. Instead the Ford sewing machinists were paid at 92% of the male rate, instead of the 85% they were receiving before the strike, plus the promise that their grading grievances would be fairly examined. Two years later came Castle's legacy of the Equal Pay Act, but one of the less well known aspects of the whole story is how progress then stalled. Some 16 years after their high level meeting, the Dagenham women were still waiting to be recognised as skilled, so out they went again. That time, unlike on the Whitehall streets in 1968, they got exactly what they asked for. BBC News - Did the Dagenham women's equal pay fight make a difference? Did the Dagenham women's equal pay fight make a difference?

By Claire Heald and Caroline McClatchey BBC News 10 things we didn't know last week A new film portrays women's battle for equal pay at Ford's Essex plant in the 1960s. But as the pay gap between working men and women endures, how much difference did they make? The spotlight falls on the women of the Ford car plant in Dagenham, Essex, this week, just as it did when they got up from their sewing machines and walked out on strike in 1968. Their story is the subject of a new British film, Made in Dagenham . It tells how 187 car-seat cover machinists challenged the accepted norm and took industrial action in the battle to get their work recognised as skilled and equal to their male colleagues. It follows the women as they brought car production at the bedrock of UK car manufacture to a halt, prompted the lay-off of thousands of workers and was only solved with the intervention of then secretary of state, Barbara Castle. It was action that fanned out across the UK and led ultimately to the introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970 , which outlawed discrimination on pay and conditions between men and women.

For those who did not live through the social shifts of the 1960s, the period after the post-war settlement, but before the UK slid into the economic abyss of the 1970s, a look through the newspaper cuttings of the time is a window on to a different world. It lets in breath of a febrile atmosphere of strong unions operating in a country based in manufacturing. Whole sections of newspapers headlined "Labour News" describe strikes and planned absenteeism, not only at factories in industrial cities, but right down to the tranquil High Street stores of John Lewis or Selfridges. 'No bra-burning' But while the men were on the picket lines, as Jacqueline Scott, Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, says: "It was a time when people still thought a woman's primary job was the home and looking after the kids, and work was something secondary, largely pin money." Until the feisty Essex women of Dagenham walked out, that is. The women sitting together in the offices of a London PR agency giggle and gossip as old friends. These days, they inhabit a demeanour far from the dispute-weary striker.

They moved the mountain but the tectonic plates were already shifting” End Quote Sarah Veale TUC But Gwen Davis, Sheila Douglass, Eileen Pullan and Vera Sime, now aged in their 70s and 80s, were at the centre of the Ford dispute. They say they never felt like trailblazers, at the forefront of the second wave of feminism "We didn't burn our bras on the way," says Eileen. The film conjures up a time of miniskirts and mopeds, but for them, there was no stripping off on the factory floor - one of the more "Carry On" aspects of the film. Instead they were motivated by a sense of injustice, that their skilled work and therefore their pay, should be graded the same as male colleagues, not at the 87% of it they were paid. "We were fighting for ourselves," says Sheila. "For what we thought was our due." "It was because we were women and we were just paid less," adds Gwen. Their action surprised their colleagues who were often their fathers, brothers and male friends and relatives.

The women found a sympathetic ear in Barbara Castle They surprised their bosses, the country, and in Barbara Castle they found a politician who shared their feeling for fairness, culminating in the 1970 Act. But the striking women voted to go back to work before they were granted equal pay, on a deal for 92% of male wages. So if the settlement fell short, how important were their actions in the equality fight? "It was the catalyst, rather than the cause," says Sarah Veale, head of equality and employment rights at the TUC. "They moved the mountain, but the tectonic plates were already shifting". As the 60s swung, she says, women working in factories were still lagging behind the middle class feminist movement. But as the female workforce grew and women became generally liberated in education and reproductive rights, there was a "growing feeling this was wrong". "What made it rush forward was these women doing something about it," says Ms Veale. "To challenge the heterodoxy was massive." Persistent gap Critics point out the women were led by a male union representative, but those there at the time say the impetus came from the women themselves.

And, initially, they had to fight entrenched union sexism, out to protect male jobs and pay. Today, while official discrimination based on sex is illegal, a gender pay gap persists. The Office for National Statistics latest Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings puts it at 20.2 %. Made in Dagenham is about life at a Ford car plant in 1968 The tasks of the Women and Work Commission , set up by Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004, to examine how to narrow the pay gap, are ongoing. And despite the Equality Act of 2010 , women are still waiting on a government decision on whether to make private companies reveal their pay gap. And the film is released in a week where a woman as high profile as TV host Tess Daly tells the Observer Magazine : "This is a business that favours men as hosts without a doubt and they're often paid more for the same job, so I guess you could call that sexism." "I've no idea [why], it's just a fact." Commentators see a rainbow of reasons.

While women today find it easier to make a start in the labour market, Dr Leen Vandercasteele, a post-doctoral research fellow University of Manchester, has found the drop off comes in career progression. Others point to a lack of affordable childcare, the uneven divide of domestic work, that women more commonly work in "ghettoised areas, the Five Cs - caring, catering, cleaning, cooking, and childcare". Ford's four women feel some women are still "used" by employers today, but they acknowledge the improvements. And, looking back, they are proud of their place in that process. "It has definitely made history," says Gwen. "It was a good fight. It was worth everything." Below is a selection of your comments Yes Equal pay essential for like work. Such a shame though that the Ford production workers allowed their manipulative union masters to price them out of their jobs later by consistently agitating for unnecessary and unrealistic demands which halted production and costing. This allowed Japan and Korea to compete successfully with lower priced popular vehicles, no production hold ups which ultimately cost Ford workers their jobs and fewer work prospects for their sons and daughters.

Jean Westley, Dagenham I agree that there are still pay gaps between men and women especially in small and medium sized companies where most of the women are employed in a clerical position and are there to supposedly support the men on the paperwork side. I have not found this problem with large companies and find they treat both men and women the same. Avril, Colchester Any nation that wastes 50% of its brain power by feminal discrimination deserves to go under. During 30 years as a Company Secretary I followed one rule: merit trumps. I promoted on the basis of competence and capability and paid all employees equally according to appointment. Anything less is not merely bad business-sense but a total lack of common-sense. David Skene-Melvin, Toronto If it wasn't for the Equal Pay Act, I wonder if I would be in the situation my husband and I are in today; I work full time and act as the 'bread-winner' and he is a full time stay at home dad for our daughter. Kirsty, Wilstead I am inspired by the Dagenham Ladies. I claimed equal pay in April 2007.

I was harassed for 9 months following my claim by the owner of the company and I had to resign for the sake of my health. Today, three and a half years later I am still without a job and my Tribunal case is still ongoing - I have received nothing by way of compensation. However - I will continue to the bitter end because, like these ladies, I hate injustice. Has it been worth it - I am still undecided. Julia, Yorkshire I work in the civil service and there is still a very large inconsistency with grading. Whilst receiving equal pay as someone with the same grade, comparable positions and job titles held by men and women are very differently graded. The problem with this sort of under-grading is that it can be more easily hidden and it is more difficult to stand your corner. This is especially the case where there is a male dominated senior management who are more likely to just label you as a bra burner if you speak up. The Dagenham girls were very brave to stand their corner but I fear that unions are not what they were and do not have the guts to back up workers on these issues.

Beccy, Southampton Equal pay between the sexes is something I 100% support but the figures for 'pay differences' between men and women don't tell the whole story. I was earning the same as a female colleague five years ago but she's had two maternity leaves and now works part time so I earn significantly more than her. That's not unfair if I work five days and she works three, especially as I now cover part of the work she was doing on the two days she no longer works! Peter, Nottingham Peter's comments show complete ignorance of the situation for most part-timers. The company firstly reduces your pay pro-rata to the hours you are working. That bit is fair. But it then refuses to reward you with the same inceases that the full-timers get. Often because the output is measured against a full-time base. The level of your responsibility is then reduced in a completely irrational way, just because you do not work as many hours. This is then use to justify paying you less than full timers. Women are paid less because company performance management systems discriminate against part-timers and those who cannot work late.

Helen, Chichester I've never heard of any job where a woman and a man are doing exactly the same job, same hours, shift pattern, grade, responsibility, in other words, same everything, where the man is paid a higher rate than the woman. Graham Triming, Chelmsford In a former job, I had a male colleague in exactly the same role, with similar qualifications (MSc and BSc, although I believe I had better A-level and GCSE grades) and less experience. Our working hours, responsibilities etc were all the same but due to his inexperience I often helped him - he was paid 10% more than me. Catriona, Stockport, UK In 1971, in Australia, I had to give evidence to an equal pay tribunal. One member told me "... but, of course, your male colleague carries the heavy boxes of books". We looked at each other and burst out laughing. As my colleague pointed out, we were often a 100 or more miles apart, so I had to carry my own boxes! We got the equal pay, but I don't remember much conversation about qualifications or professionalism.

Gina, Lancaster They won their battle, and lost the war. Ford no longer makes cars at Dagenham. Now all 'our' Fords come from Germany, Belgium and Spain, so these women's sons and daughters no longer have jobs. Very sad. Julian R, Sheffield, England It is a brave employer who takes on female staff of childbearing age. The costs of reorganising work schedules around her child care arrangements and engaging temporary or agency replacements to cover maternity leave etc should be taken into account when calculating equal pay. Dave, Cesme All the discussions I have seen of this film seem to lack any historical perspective. Up until the First World War, it was regarded as shameful if a married woman engaged in paid work. Men were designated as the bread-winner whether they wanted that role or not. A married woman's job was to wash, clean, cook and raise the children. Although things got shaken up by the First World War, this attitude persisted. My grandmother had to resign her job as a teacher when she got married; ever wonder why female teachers are always referred to as "Miss"?

The Second World War had an even greater impact and, although married women were allowed to work, it was still considered that men - the family bread winners - should be paid more that women who were working to supplement the family income - "pin money". From our perspective of "equality mindedness", convenience food, labour saving devices and the welfare state, this may all seem odd, but it was practical and widely accepted at the time. Robert Lee, Bracknell, UK Equal pay | Socialist Review Julie Sherry Julie Sherry reviews the new musical telling of the Ford women's struggle Made in Dagenham the film is excellent, but the collective experience of the musical — watching the performers live and alongside thousands of others — blurs the separation between a powerful but historical story and the live debates we are having in austerity Britain today. This was amplified watching the show in a week in which some 700,000 workers, mainly women, had struck and 100,000 had marched over low pay. Sitting in the theatre you couldn’t help but wonder how many public sector workers were in the audience and how they might be feeling.

Tags: Steve Underhill The female workers among Birmingham's refuse collection staff have been underpaid for years. They rightly put in equal pay claims and claiming for back pay, and this can range from £30,000 to £60,000 each. It should have been dealt with years ago, but it never was. So the council had two choices: to bring the women's wages back up to our level or drop our money, which is exactly what they have done. It's loaders on the refuse collection side who have lost, ranging up to over £4,000. The drivers on refuse collections didn't lose anything. On my side of the council, the street clean team, it was our drivers who lost money, up to £3,000, but not workers like me who are considered street sweepers. We didn't lose anything. Tags: Made in Dagenham: A 1968 strike led to equal pay for women | The Independent This Britain Made in Dagenham: A 1968 strike led to equal pay for women The protest by female Ford machinists &ndash; helped by Fred Blake &ndash; means there is relative equality today.

A film recalls their struggle. Saturday 11 September 2010 23:00 BST Click to follow Made in Dagenham: A 1968 strike led to equal pay for women 1/2 2/2 GETTY IMAGES They set out to fight for a fair deal for themselves; they ended up changing the world of work for generations of women. Now the 187 women machinists from Ford's flagship factory in Essex are to be celebrated in Made in Dagenham – starring Miranda Richardson and Bob Hoskins – which opens in cinemas across the UK this month. This weekend the man who worked behind the scenes as history was being made spoke, in a rare interview, to the IoS about the part he played in it. The former transport union official Frederick Blake, now 91, recalled: "When the girls came down to see Barbara Castle [then employment minister] I was asked to sit in a separate room because she wanted to see them on their own, which is fair enough." Mr Blake was described by newspapers at the time of the strike as "the leader of the new suffragettes".

"Although I was in charge of the union for the Ford factory I stayed in the background because I didn't want people to think that a man was leading the women," he added. "I was asked by the bosses to tell them to go back to work so we could keep negotiating, but I wouldn't do that until we had a good settlement because there were men doing the same job as them being paid more. It wasn't fair." Mr Blake explained that he was an advocate of women's rights long before the strike that made history: "When I came home after fighting in Burma in the Second World War and saw the damage that the bombs had done to the country, I thought, 'Why don't the women get medals for what they've had to put up with, too?' That's what first made me think about equality." When women machinists at Ford's Dagenham factory downed tools in 1968 in protest at the fact that they were classed as unskilled workers, while male colleagues doing the same job were thought to be skilled and paid much more for their efforts, they couldn't have imagined the ramifications.

The three-week strike brought production at the factory – which was the focus of the UK car industry at the time – to a standstill, and the dispute was resolved only when Barbara Castle was brought in to negotiate a settlement. The Ford machinists went back to work after agreeing to be paid 92 per cent of male machinists' wages, and the strike speeded up the introduction of the Equal Pay Act of 1970, which made it illegal to have different pay scales for men and women. The new film which dramatises these events has been compared to the modern British classics Billy Elliot and The Full Monty. With the Calendar Girls director, Nigel Cole, at the helm, the film stars a clutch of high-profile British performers, including Rosamund Pike as the factory boss's rich wife, and Sally Hawkins as the strike leader. However, some of the women workers who took part in the strike have accused the film-makers of "sexing up" their story.

"At the beginning of the film they strip off on the factory floor; we weren't allowed to strip off, and we had too much pride to do it even if we were," said Gwen Davis, who was a 35-year-old worker in the Ford factory at the time of the strike. "It is very exaggerated, but still good." The women on the picket line in 1968 endured jeers when a photographer snapped one of their banners declaring "We Want Sexual Equality" partly unfurled, so that it read "We Want Sex". The machinists were also supported by the union representative Bernie Passingham, and many had the backing of husbands who worked in the factory. At the time the practice of women being paid less than men for the same jobs was widespread – a tradition that hasn't entirely died out. In 2010 women working full time in Britain still earn on average 16.4 per cent less per hour than men working full time. "After the strike lots of people came up to us and said that they'd started their own fights after hearing about ours," said Mrs Davis.

"Women do have an easier time of it now, but you still hear some of the same grievances." More about: Workers' Liberty Workers' Liberty The real story of Made in Dagenham Submitted by cathy n on 14 July, 2008 - 15:13 Author: Becky Crocker London Workers' Liberty is holding a meeting about the story and lessons of the strike on 21 October 2010. Details here . *** In June 1968 women sewing machinists in the Ford car plant in Dagenham took a stand for equal pay in a strike that stopped production for three weeks. They succeeded in getting abolished their lower “women’s rate” of pay and precipitated wider action: there were other equal pay strikes that year and the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women’s Equal Rights (NJACCWER) was formed by women trade unionists, who organised a demonstration for equal pay in 1969. Without the Ford women, there would have been no Equal Pay Act of 1970.

Equal pay had been a confused aspiration for the trade union movement since the mid nineteenth century when women’s work was seen as a threat to male employment and bans on married women working were supported by trade unions. When unemployment rose during the 1930s, increased female employment (from 27% of the total workforce in 1923 to 30% in 1939) fuelled the fear of a female threat and unions renewed their call for marriage bans or a wider gap between male and female wages. The idea of a male breadwinner bringing in a “family wage” institutionalised women’s low pay and influenced the labour movement. The welfare state was established around a conception of society in family units. Beverage said, “The attitude of the housewife to gainful employment outside the home should not be the same as that of the single woman. She has other duties...” It was down to women’s organising to defy these attitudes and fight for a wage that would not allow women to be used as cheap labour to bring down wages as a whole. The demand of the Ford women in 1968 was originally to re-grade their jobs from unskilled B grade to semi-skilled grade C.

This demand was not won until another strike in 1984. Ironically, the Ford women had not been able to use the Equal Pay Act that they precipitated to win their re-grading, as they could not compare themselves to a man in their role; they could only claim that their skill level matched some men. The real cause of the pay gap between men and women was and remains women’s segregation into underpaid and devalued jobs. Just as the Ford women had to fight to prove their worth, fights in low-paid industries such as cleaning are happening and are necessary today. This is the story of the Ford Sewing Machinists’ struggle for equal pay, with extracts from interviews (conducted by the TUC) with the women and trade unionists who took part. The job The sewing machinists at Ford made the car seat covers. It was a skilled job. Assessors inspected them on the job. Sheila Douglas, one of the women involved in the dispute said, “I had to do 30 seat covers an hour, we were watched over and timed”.

At Ford there was a skilled male rate, a semi-skilled male rate, an unskilled male rate and a women’s rate, which was only 87% of the unskilled male rate. With the obvious injustice of the ‘women’s rate’ and the devaluation of the skill they brought to the job, there was a strong feeling, as expressed by Violet Dawson, from the dispute, that, “We wanted C grade, we wanted equal pay”. The women put up with harsh working conditions. The company expanded its premises at the River Plant in Dagenham into an asbestos air craft hanger with holes in the roof. Sheila Douglas recalled, “We used to stuff the seats with wadding. The building was two-thirds brick and above that asbestos. All these little holes used to get drafts in. We used to stuff holes in the ceiling with wadding to keep warm”. Machinists worked without guards on the needles and injuries were common. It was said that you weren’t accepted as a proper machinist until you’d been caught by the machine. The wage was small. On grade B, women earned eight or nine pounds. Sheila Douglas admitted it “seemed like a lot of money, because...

I’d been on piece work... if I didn’t work, I didn’t earn. When we went to Fords we was on time work so whatever you done you got some wage each week…” But the money was already spoken for. Sheila was “living at home, I had to give my mum money and she needed anything I could give up.” Vera Sime, a fellow striker, said, “I gave my sister half my wages. She looked after my children so we had half each, that’s how we worked it”. Violet agreed, “It went in the home didn’t it, and on the children”. Grievances about the women’s rate and their devalued skill were raised through company procedures with no success. The company feared upsetting its entire grading structure and causing resentment amongst male workers. Bernie Passington, convenor for the T & G union who fought for the women at the car plant, said, “They got ignored. I went up with two stewardesses with thirteen pieces for a head rest and said to the company man, ‘Put them together’. He said, ‘Well, what are they?’ I said, ‘You should know. 13 pieces.

Give them to a production girl and she knows what to do with them. That girl don’t put all those bits in a jig or anything. All she knows is she’s got to put all those bits together so at the end of it there’s a neat rolled head rest’. I said, ‘Who else does that? Nobody. ...She has to use her mind’. But you still couldn’t get anywhere with the company...” Sheila recalled, “That’s how it was all sort of kicking off really. About the C grade and for equal rights it ended up. But originally it was for the C grade we were fighting”. Bernie said, “And in the end, like any group of workers, if they’re going to take no notice, better do something what makes them take notice”. The strike Sheila Douglas remembered, “We had a meeting on the shop floor and we had a meeting in the employment exchange to vote whether we would strike or not. And that’s how it happened. I don’t think it was unanimous but it was more for than against obviously because we came out on strike.” The strike by the women sewing machinists brought production at the Ford motor company to a standstill.

The impact was huge, especially when the Ford Halewood Plant in Liverpool joined the action. Bernie said “It shook them to the core. And being women, the mighty Ford motor company got women in dispute… It was something new. It shut the place down, they were laying people off”. Sheila: “It wasn’t the done thing at the time.” Violet: “It frightened them.” Equal Pay & The Equal Pay Act 1970 | National Union of Teachers - NUT Equal Pay & The Equal Pay Act 1970 The struggle for equal pay lies at the heart of exploring women's campaign for fair and equal rights in the workplace. The TUC backed "Union Makes Us Strong" website includes a historical introduction to the campaign for equal pay covering the 1830s, to the introduction of the Equal Pay Act in 1970. The campaign for equal pay has a long history; one which is still ongoing. Women were often a marginalised sector of the workforce and were effectively excluded from many unions until the latter part of the 19th century. The story of the Women Chainmakers' fight for a living wage, provide ideal opportunities for challenging traditional attitudes about women's place in society.

In 1910 the Women Chainmakers of Cradley Heath formed a trade union and won the first minimum wage agreement after a strike battle lasting for 10 weeks. This increased the wages of the poorest workers by some 150 per cent and remains today one of the most inspiring tales of workers' struggle. Women's low pay is rooted in long standing assumptions about a woman's place. The jobs women do attract lower wages. Mary Macarthur's story, and her dedication to improving conditions for working women, form an ideal route into a study of past campaigns for equal pay. The Equal Pay Act On 7th June 1968, 850 women machinists working at the Ford Factory in Dagenham went on strike for equal pay after discovering they were being paid 15 per cent less than men for doing the same work. The demands of these women paved the way for the enactment of equal pay legislation in 1970. You might want to look at both equal pay and the position and status of British women in the late 1960s. The Film Education charity has produced digital teaching materials exploring the film Made in Dagenham.

The TUC has produced a series of films about the fight for equal pay. They include oral history interviews with women and union representatives involved in some of the major equal pay cases since 1968 including the film "A Woman's Worth: the Story of the Ford Sewing Machinists". The Equal Pay Act 1970 gives an individual a right to the same contractual pay and benefits as a person of the opposite sex in the same employment, where the man and the woman are doing: like work; or work rated as equivalent under an analytical job evaluation study; or work that is proved to be of equal value. The Equal Pay Act has now become part of the 2010 Equality Act. The first effect of the Equal Pay Act 1970 was to remove separate lower women's rates of pay. Before 1970, it was common practice in the private sector and some parts of the public sector for there to be separate, and lower, women's rates of pay.

So, for example at the Ford Motor Company, before a new pay structure was introduced in 1967, there were four grades for production workers: male - skilled male - unskilled female The only significant group of female production workers at Ford were sewing machinists, who were paid less than male toilet cleaners and stores workers. The Equal Pay Act introduced an 'implied equality clause' into all employees' contracts. This had the effect of eliminating separate lower women's rates of pay. All such rates had to be raised to at least the lowest male rate over a 5 year period between 1970 and 1975. Some employers got round the legislation, for example, by raising the women's rates to the lowest male rate, even when the women's jobs were more demanding than the men's, or by creating different job titles for the women. Despite these strategies, full-time women's average earnings compared to men's rose by 5 per cent, from 72 per cent to 77 per cent, over a 5 year period in the 1970s - the biggest ever increase in this ratio.

Nearly 40 years after the introduction of the Equal Pay Act 1970 the struggle for equal pay still persists. The gender pay gap in Britain remains among the highest in the European Union with women earning 15.5% less than men. The Fawcett Society estimates that that removing barriers to women working in occupations traditionally done by men and increasing women's participation in the labour market could be worth between £15 and £23 Billion or 1.3 to 2% of GDP. The Equal Pay Act has now become part of the Equality Act 2010. The Act brings together nine separate pieces of legislation, including the Sex Discrimination Act, the Race Relations Act and the Disability Discrimination Act simplifying the law and strengthening it in important ways to help tackle discrimination and inequality. Unfortunately a section of the Equality Act that would have given powers to make companies disclose pay differences between men and women, if by 2013 they continued to show no evidence of tackling them, has been removed. This removal of the threat of disclosure may lead to a decline in the closing of the gap between men and women's pay.

Materials and Resources on Equal Pay The TUC's Union History website's section on Winning Equal Pay "Winning Equal Pay: The value of women's work - Teachers' notes "Winning Equal Pay: The value of women's work - Tutor's pack The film documents students at Mulberry School for Girls in London learning about the history of equal pay campaigns A historical account of the life of women chainmakers BBC Radio 4's Woman's programme discussing the legacy of Mary Macarthur and the Chainmakers' strike. Mary Macarthur with links to the Exhibition of Sweated Industries, Will Anderson, and Mary Bondfield: The TUC has produced a series of films about the fight for equal pay. For learners aged 15–19 features digital teaching materials exploring the film Made in Dagenham.

The Teachers' Notes offer a comprehensive guide to using the resource 'Made In Dagenham' Chronicles A Fight For Equal Pay : NPR 'Made In Dagenham' Chronicles A Fight For Equal Pay Embed Embed 'Made In Dagenham' Chronicles A Fight For Equal Pay 'Made In Dagenham' Chronicles A Fight For Equal Pay Embed Embed Heard on All Things Considered NPR Staff Leading The Second Wave: British Cabinet Secretary Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson) meets with strike leader Rita O'Grady (Sally Hawkins) in Nigel Cole's Made In Dagenham. According to Hawkins, O'Grady was a crusader for women's rights not enough people have heard of. Susie Allnut/Sony Pictures Classics hide caption toggle caption Susie Allnut/Sony Pictures Classics As a heart-breaking rape victim in Vera Drake and a resiliently optimistic teacher in Happy-Go-Lucky, British actress Sally Hawkins is used to playing women with pluck. In her new film, Made In Dagenham, she plays Rita O'Grady, a mild-mannered mother and factory worker in Dagenham, England, who takes the fight for equal pay from the factory floor to Parliament. The film is based on a true story.

O'Grady's activism led directly to Britain's Equal Pay Act of 1970 — and, according to Hawkins, not enough people have heard of her. "I'm ashamed to say that I didn't know about their plight or their fight," Hawkins tells NPR's Michele Norris. "A lot of people of my generation, and of younger generations, they don't really know. That's why it's so important that these stories are told and retold." Unimpressed By Politicians At a Ford plant in Dagenham, England, in 1968, the female machinists went on strike, demanding the same pay as the men in the factory. "It is such an incredibly important point in history," Hawkins says. "It actually had a ripple effect across the world — America became involved, the Ford plants in America [became involved]. When you have workers at the ground level having something to say or going on strike, as they were, it affects the whole industry." Article continues after sponsorship As long as you're speaking your truth, you can say it with the quietest voice because it will be heard. British actress Sally Hawkins To research her role, Hawkins had tea with three of the women who had been active in the strike.

They still live in Dagenham, she says, and are still close friends. "They were very lovely and very generous with their time," says Hawkins. "What I got from them was their friendship. That's the glue that holds them together — and their strength in numbers." "And they're not politicians," she adds. "They're not political animals by any means. They don't have that language at their disposal — they're sort of learning as they're going along." According to Hawkins, the Dagenham women were refreshingly nonplussed by the fact that a film was being made about their fight. They were equally unimpressed by the overtures of politicians, just as they had been at the time of the strike, she says. "They were saying that they were going to meet [former British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown, to have lunch with him — that that's fine, but it was sort of getting in the way," Hawkins says with a laugh. To them, Hawkins says, the strike was quite simple: This is what they were owed. The balance had to be readdressed. 'Quite Joan of Arc' Hawkins says Made In Dagenham was a powerful film for her.

At one point, her character crashes a union meeting filled with men in dark suits who are preparing to marginalize the women at the plant. As Rita O'Grady, Hawkins strides to the front of the room, takes the stage, and takes a stand at the podium. It is a classic example of speaking truth to power. Women With Pluck: Sally Hawkins is used to playing strong women in film. In 2008, she won a Golden Globe for her performance as an optimistic teacher in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky. Matt Carr/Getty Images Entertainment hide caption toggle caption Matt Carr/Getty Images Entertainment Women With Pluck: Sally Hawkins is used to playing strong women in film. In 2008, she won a Golden Globe for her performance as an optimistic teacher in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky. Matt Carr/Getty Images Entertainment "I love that scene," Hawkins says. "It is about speaking your truth. For me it's the scene — for me, for Rita — of the film. She realizes actually the power of speaking truth." "You don't need to shout in those situations, you don't need to stamp your feet — as I have done in the past," she laughs.

"It doesn't really get you anywhere. As long as you're speaking your truth, you can say it with the quietest voice because it will be heard." Directed by Nigel Cole, who had women cheering on the Nude Society Ladies in Calendar Girls, Made In Dagenham is bound to appeal to female audiences — particularly to women of a certain age who may be drawn to the film's politics and nostalgia for hoop earrings. But the film has a message for men as well. In a particularly powerful scene, Rita's husband, played by the actor Daniel Mays, begs her to call off the strike, and then literally tries to drag her back into the house. "I've never slept with other women," he tells her, "I've never once raised my hand." He says it as if it's a point of pride. Rita O'Grady's response? "For Christ's sake — that's as it should be." When asked what she wants men and women to take away from the film, Hawkins has difficulty answering. "So much," she says, "and I don't think I could sum it up in a sound bite.

It happens to be about this particular group of women, but it's about issues we all relate to." Hawkins, who won a Golden Globe in 2008 for her performance in Happy-Go-Lucky, is already making a name for herself in Hollywood. When asked if there's a certain kind of role that she's dying to play, beyond the strong women that she's known for, Hawkins hesitates. "Oh, that's a lovely question," she says. "Well, it's always good to play evil. But I haven't really thought like that, and perhaps I should. There are certain Shakespearean roles that I'd love to have a crack at. And I love Joan of Arc." She pauses. "Well, Rita is quite Joan of Arc," she says.

"I think I've been quite lucky." Ford to open £475m Dagenham production line | Daily Mail Online Next Made in Dagenham again: Ford to open state-of-the-art £475million production line making new green diesel engines Factory in east London opened in 1931 and now being transformed with the help of £8.9million from government In 1968 women machinists famously went on strike in key moment for equal pay fight which was made into a film Plant still makes 800,000 diesel engines a year, 85 per cent exported, and the new line is set to open in November

Question: Which 2010 film is about a 1968 dispute when women machinists went on strike for equal pay?
Answer: MADE IN DAGENHAM